There is nothing quite so exciting as waking up to a fresh snowfall.  The beauty of the spider’s web is out of this world.  This week our landscape has been transformed by the heaviest snowfall the UK has seen in years.  It makes for very exciting dog walks and hair-raising drives!  When I was teaching I used to love a ‘snow day’.  But now that I am a little too old for sledging, sitting at the window watching the younger generation having such fun just makes me wistful.  Then my mind drifts….

It snowed overnight and the roads are a fright,

So the schools are all closed ~ on a Friday!

Mums and dads can’t drive, their cars slip and slide

So its family fun on a school day.

Dogs in bright jackets are leaping for joy

Taken out for a walk, on a school day.

Babies and toddlers peep out of their prams

They’re going to the park, on a school day.

Tiny tots muffled in mittens and hats,

Squeal in delight, on a school day.

Giggling girls, hugging their friends,

Slide down the hill, on a school day.

Teen terrors in hoodies become little boys

Throwing snowballs at girls, on a school day.

Steep slopes draw the daring on sledges and boards,

They hurtle downhill, on a school day.

I sit at the window and, like falling snow,

My thoughts pile up into drifts.

My smiles turn to tears at the sights and sounds

Of my school days, as the frozen scene shifts.

Of ink wells and blotters, of wafers and milk,

Of chalk boards and outside loos;

Of walking to school by the RiverTyne,

Of castles, and coalmines and ships.

And then there are people, who wave as they pass,

Loved aunties and cousins and friends

A younger brother no longer in touch

A mother and father I mourned.

There are icicles hanging near a frozen stream,

The snow covered branches are bending

The field is a snow frosted wonderland

Its beauty my broken heart mending.

I wrote this poem the last time there was heavy snow on a Friday, in 2013.  Here are some of the photos I took then from my window or on my rambles/trudges through the Cotswolds.